When a manufacturer ships an electronic chip to a customer, the manufacturer, in a sense, “loses” control over the chip. Once out of the hands of the manufacturer, an electronic chip may be used by anyone in any manner for any purpose. However, there are many situations in the post-sales lifetime of a chip where the manufacturer would rather have the ability to terminate a function in the chip, a collection of functions, or even cripple the entire chip to the extent that the entire chip is non-functional for the user. In addition, there are also situations where the manufacturer would like to be able to enhance or enable one or more functions on a chip in order to nurture the chip in the field and thereby extending the chip's life. Currently, there is no simple way for the manufacturer to drastically affect a chip's operation after the sale without having physical access to the chip.